The present invention relates to semiconductor optoelectronic devices in general and, more particularly, to wavelength tunable surface emitting semiconductor lasers.
Tunable vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSEL""s) have recently generated considerable interest in the art. This is because these devices show great promise not only for increasing bandwidth during wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) in fiber-optic communications, but also for use in switches, routers, highly compact spectroscopic interferometers, optical trans-receivers and numerous other applications.
For example, in a WDM system, a single tunable laser source can be used as a rapid back-up for disaster recovery. This is because the single tunable laser source can be quickly tuned to the desired wavelength if and when an existing laser source fails.
Tunable lasers also have wide applications in optical sensors. For example, in gas sensing applications, a tunable laser may be conveniently used to detect specific gases for environmental monitoring.
VCSEL""s are extremely attractive for integrated optoelectronic circuits. For one thing, they operate at a single longitudinal mode with a circular aperture, thereby providing efficient coupling to fibers. In addition, they are compact, and can be monolithically fabricated in large, dense arrays on a wafer-scale.
As a fixed wavelength light source, VCSEL""s have demonstrated limited application and functionality.
Some past effort has been directed towards achieving wavelength tuning in VCSEL""s by introducing refractive index changes with (1) temperature (see, for example, Berger, P. R., Dutta, N. K., Choquette, K. D., Hasnain, G., and Chand, N., xe2x80x9cMonolithically Peltier-cooled vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasersxe2x80x9d, Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 59, No. 1, pp. 117-119, 1991; and Chang-Hasnain, C. J., Harbison, J. P., Zah, C. E., Florez, L. T., and Andreadakis, N. C., xe2x80x9cContinuous wavelength tuning of two-electrode vertical cavity surface emitting lasersxe2x80x9d, Electron. Lett., Vol. 27, No. 11, pp. 1002-1003, 1991); or (2) carrier injection (see, for example, Gmachi, C., Kock, A., Rosenberger, M., Gornik, E., Micovic, M., and Walker, J. F., xe2x80x9cFrequency tuning of a double-heterojunction AlGaAs/GaAs-vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser by a serial integrated in-cavity modulator diodexe2x80x9d, Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 62, No. 3, pp. 219-221, 1993).
Both of these techniques provide a tuning range of roughly 10 nm; however, this is still considerably short of the several tens of nanometer tuning range which is necessary for bandwidth-hungry WDM and dense WDM applications.
Wavelength tuning has also been achieved in edge emitting lasers by changing the cavity length, such as in external cavity laser systems, or by changing the refractive index along the cavity length, such as in DFB and DBR lasers. In external cavity lasers, tuning is achieved through mechanical rotation of external gratings and reflecting mirrors. Unfortunately, the tuning speed is slow and limited to the millisecond range. In DFB or DBR lasers, adjusting the refractive index to cover the whole EDFA range has permitted large-scale tuning on the order of 100 nm.
Adjustment of the refractive index may be achieved through heating, carrier injection and electro-optic effects. However, tuning often is quasi-continuous. To achieve the desired transmission wavelength, complicated electronics and computing algorithms must be integrated into the laser system. Additionally, device fabrication is complicated and involves numerous processing steps and selective epi-layer re-growth, thereby reducing yield and increasing costs considerably.
VCSEL""s overcome the foregoing fabrication, performance and cost issues. As a result, VCSEL""s are viable candidates for many real-world communications applications. VCSEL""s are compatible with low-cost wafer level fabrication and characterization technologies. VCSEL""s produce circularly-shaped, low-numerical-aperture output beams which may be easily coupled to fibers and other free space optics. The short cavity length of VCSEL""s also ensures a single longitudinal lasing mode which is desirable for potential WDM or other wavelength addressing schemes.
Variation of the length of a Fabry-Perot cavity has been shown to be a viable technique for accomplishing wavelength tuning in VCSEL""s without affecting the laser gain medium. This can be achieved in surface emitting devices by the provision of a top mirror that can be translated relative to the bottom mirror by the application of an electrostatic field. By the selective application of an electrostatic voltage to the movable mirror, the cavity length, and hence the lasing wavelength, may be tuned continuously. The ability to tune over the entire gain region, without mode hopping, is a significant benefit.
This technique has been implemented in tunable Fabry-Perot devices such as (1) filters (see, for example, Larson, M. C., Pezeshki, B., and Harris, J. S., xe2x80x9cVertical coupled-cavity microinterferometer on GaAs with deformable-membrane top mirrorxe2x80x9d, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Vol. 7, pp. 382-384, 1995; and Tran, A. T. T. T., Lo, Y. H., Zhu, Z. H., Haronian, D., and Mozdy, E., xe2x80x9cSurface Micromachined Fabry-Perot Tunable Filterxe2x80x9d, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 393-395, 1996); (2) light emitting diodes (see, for example, Larson, M. C., and Harris, J. S., xe2x80x9cBroadly-tunable resonant-cavity light emissionxe2x80x9d, Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 67, No. 5, pp. 590-592, 1995); and (3) VCSEL""s (see, for example, Wu, M. S., Vail, E. E., Li, G. S., Yuen, W., and Chang-Hasnain, C. J., xe2x80x9cTunable micromachined vertical-cavity surface emitting laserxe2x80x9d, Electronic Letters, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 1671-1672, 1995; and Larson, M. C., Massengale, A. R., and Harris, J. S., xe2x80x9cContinuously tunable micromachined vertical-cavity surface emitting laser with 18 nm wavelength rangexe2x80x9d, Electronic Letters, Vol. 32, No. 19, pp. 330-332, 1996).
For VCSEL""s to qualify for use in telecommunications applications, single-mode operation is essential. Achieving single-mode operation is difficult in conventional VCSEL""s with flat DBR structures where the large lateral dimension of the device allows excitation of higher order spatial modes. Typically, obtaining single, fundamental spatial mode operation in a conventional VCSEL is achieved by decreasing the dimensions of the current injection area of the device, index guiding by lateral oxidation, etched mesa formation, or re-growth. These techniques are difficult to implement in more complicated structures such as microelectromechanically tunable VCSEL""s.
Providing uniform current injection significantly improves the ability to achieve single-mode laser operation.
One technique for achieving uniform current injection is to provide doped cladding layers that urge the charge toward the aperture. Another technique is to provide a barrier layer on the cladding layer.
This patent application claims benefit of pending prior U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/105,399, filed Jun. 26, 1998 by Parviz Tayebati et al. for MICROELECTROMECHANICALLY TUNABLE, CONFOCAL, VERTICAL CAVITY SURFACE EMITTING LASER AND FABRY PEROT FILTER, which document is hereby incorporated herein by reference.
This patent application also claims benefit of pending prior U.S. Provisional Patent Application Serial No. 60/146,396, filed Jul. 30, 1999 by Peidong Wang et al. for TUNABLE MICROELECTROMECHANICAL VCSEL WITH HALF-SYMMETRIC CAVITY, which document is also incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention addresses the single mode operation issues in this novel, microelectromechanically (MEM) tunable, half-symmetric, vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL).
The present invention also includes another innovation for producing, via micromachining, a half-symmetric cavity VCSEL that comprises a tunable cavity formed between a set of planar DBR""s and a set of curved DBR""s. Curvature in the DBR""s is achieved by the judicious introduction of an appropriate magnitude of strain in the deposited layers. By the creation of a half-symmetric microcavity, the spatial mode and divergence of the laser mode can be controlled precisely so as to (a) produce single spatial modes by optically restricting the lasing domain in the gain region, and (b) manipulate the divergence angle of the VCSEL so as to optimize the coupling of generated light into a single mode fiber.
The fabrication techniques of the present device provide extremely precise control of the physical dimensions of both the top DBR structure and the supporting structure, which is indispensable for achieving highly reproducible performance with inconsequential device-to-device variation.
The present invention also provides for tuning the resonance wavelength of the Fabry-Perot cavity in a continuous fashion over a wide wavelength range. This ensures not only single-longitudinal operations, but also single spatial (transverse) mode (TEMoo) operations over the entire tuning range. Furthermore, such single spatial mode (TEMoo) operations are maintained in the entire current range in which the invention functions.
A half-symmetric tunable VCSEL device is depicted in FIG. 1. This device operates at a single longitudinal mode over the entire bandwidth (e.g., 30-120 nm) of the gain medium.
In the VCSEL, a gain medium, consisting of multiple quantum wells, is disposed in the air cavity as shown in FIG. 1. The VCSEL can be photo-pumped, or intra-cavity electrical interconnections can be made for current injection.
The current invention deals particularly with the intra-cavity electrical interconnections for current injection tunable VCSEL""s. Of course, it is also to be appreciated that the tunable VCSEL can be formed with a top distributed Bragg reflector having a planar configuration, without departing from the scope of the present invention.
The following is a list of some technological breakthroughs resulting from the present invention.
A schematic diagram of the steps used in fabricating a novel wavelength tunable VCSEL based on the present invention is shown in FIG. 2 (i.e., FIGS. 2A-2G). The device comprises bottom DBR""s consisting of high index-contrast dielectric pairs such as Si/Al2O3, Si/SiO2, Si/MgO, TiO2/SiO2, or SiO2 (Ta2O5, or Nb2O5) along with selectively-deposited top DBR mirrors, with an air-cavity and an active medium embedded in the Fabry-Perot cavity formed by the two DBR""s.
The present invention also accommodates a hybrid mirror system such as bottom epitaxially grown DBR""s and top deposited DBR""s.
The top DBR resides on a thin, supporting membrane or multiple tether structure made of Si3N4 or metal (TiW) that is supported at its perimeter by a thicker metal support (see FIGS. 3A-3C). This forms a trampoline type of structure. In the case of a circular membrane structure, radially extending openings in the Si3N4 or metal film (TiW) are used for selectively removing an underlying sacrificial layer during the top DBR release process, as will be discussed further below.
By applying an appropriate voltage across this membrane and the bottom DBR""s, the trampoline structure, along with the top mirror, can be translated toward, and away from, the bottom DBR so as to tune the laser emission. Since the DBR""s are broad band, tuning is possible over the entire bandwidth of the laser gain spectrum, which is nominally about 60 nm.
One of the important features of the present device is that the new fabrication process provides precise control over the lateral dimensions of the trampoline structure and the air-cavity length, both of which are important for the consistent manufacturing of substantially identical devices. This is made possible in the present invention by allowing the sacrificial layer to act as a die in order to define the lateral dimensions of the trampoline structure and the vertical dimension of the air-cavity. As a result, the possible ill effects of uncontrolled dimensions, ensuing during the selective removal of the sacrificial layer, are effectively eliminated.
In addition, the new devices are small and compact (approximately 500 xcexcmxc3x97500 xcexcm), thereby allowing arrays thereof to be manufactured and coupled to fibers.
It is well known that the Rayleigh range, z0, which defines the distance at which the wave front is most curved, is related to mirror curvature, R, and cavity length, d, by the equation z0=[(Rxe2x88x92d)/d]xc2xd (xe2x80x9cEquation 1xe2x80x9d). For instance, a resonator with a cavity length of 1.5 microns, and a radius of curvature of 1.5 millimeter for the curved DBR""s, leads to a z0 value of 150 microns, and to a fundamental mode beam waist, W0, of 8.5 microns at a wavelength, xcex, of 1.5 microns, according to the relationship W0=(z0xcex/xcfx80)xc2xd (xe2x80x9cEquation 2xe2x80x9d). Since the value of the mode size at position z is given by the equation W(z)=W0[1+(z/z0)2]xc2xd (xe2x80x9cEquation 3xe2x80x9d), and since z0 is approximately a hundred times larger than the cavity length, the mode size remains virtually the same over the length of the cavity. Consequently, light from a 9-micron-core, single-mode fiber on the input side can excite this fundamental mode, and the transmitted single mode beam can be efficiently coupled to a single-mode fiber. As such, by curving the mirror, the mode spot size can be adjusted to match that of a single mode fiber without requiring a lens. The tradeoff is, however, that in this case the fiber has to be positioned within 0.5 micron (in the lateral direction) with respect to the optical axis of the cavity in order to avoid exciting undesirable higher order Hermite-Gaussian modes. In order to improve the alignment tolerance of the coupling fiber, a thermally expanded core fiber with mode size of 20-50 microns can be used in conjunction with mirrors with appropriately reduced curvature. The curvature R of the mirror is adjusted based on Equations 1-3 above to match the mode size W0 of the thermally expanded core fiber. Because of the larger size of the Gaussian mode, the lateral positioning of the fiber is relaxed.
This design is distinctly different from the single-crystal, parallel mirror resonator design disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,825,262, issued Apr. 25, 1989 to Stephen R. Mallinson.
The processing steps for the fabrication of a novel MEM tunable VCSEL with a half-symmetric cavity of the present invention are similar to those utilized in the fabrication of a novel planar cavity tunable VCSEL of the present invention. A significant difference is in the deposition of the curved DBR""s. Control of the magnitude and type of strain in the deposited multilayer dielectric stack of DBR""s, and the supporting thin silicon-nitride membrane, is carefully engineered so as to achieve the desired mirror curvature. The magnitude and the type of strain (tensile or compressive) is introduced in these films by the judicious choice of deposition parameters, such as the ratio of the gas mixtures of silane (SiH4) and ammonia (NH4), the total pressure of the gases used, and the magnitude of RF power used. The resulting stress gradient between the tensile strained silicon-nitride membrane and the compressively strained dielectric mirror stacks results in a concave DBR. Further control of the curvature of the top DBR can be achieved by introducing a stress gradient within the mirror layers by a gradual change of temperature and/or deposition voltage. Alternative methods for introducing the desired stress gradient within the mirror layers include the use of a secondary ion source to selectively modify the stress within each layer of the mirror by varying the current or voltage. In one example, a silicon nitride layer of 0.5 micron thickness, with 100 MPa of tensile stress, was deposited by PECVD, and the top mirror was deposited at 100xc2x0 C. using ion-beam sputtering at 700V. The resulting mirror curvature of approximately 1 mm was achieved following removal of the sacrificial layer. Furthermore, varying the temperature of the substrate during the mirror deposition from room temperature to 120xc2x0 C. resulted in a further stress gradient in the mirror layers, decreasing the mirror curvature to 0.75 mm.
In the tunable VCSEL, the gain medium resides inside the Fabry-Perot cavity defined by a set of planar DBR""s and a set of movable curved DBR""s, as shown in FIG. 1. Excitation of the gain medium by the fundamental mode leads to laser emission of a single, circular spatial mode. As a result, lateral optical mode confinement arises naturally, without having to form a lateral waveguide. This results in highly efficient VCSEL""s.
FIG. 4 shows a VCSEL configured according to the principles of the present invention, in which the spatial mode of laser oscillation is controlled by controlling the transverse optical mode. By forming a half-symmetric resonator cavity structure, the areas of gain medium subject to lasing action is limited to a well-defined eignmode with reduced lateral dimensions at the center of the aperture. Due to the properties of the curved top mirror, the lateral dimensions of the laser oscillations can be reduced to a few microns, forcing the laser to oscillate in a single, fundamental spatial mode. For a given air gap cavity L and a desired spot size Wo, the desired radius of curvature R is determined by:
L(Rxe2x88x92L)=(xcfx80Wo2/xcex)2 
For example, a tunable VCSEL operating in the 980 nm range with an air gap cavity length of approximately 3 xcexcm and spot size of 3 xcexcm has a radius of curvature of approximately 330 xcexcm.
The spacing between modes of such optical cavity can be approximated by the equation:
xcex94xcex=xcex3/(2xcfx802Wo2) 
This formula indicates that by decreasing the radius of curvature, the spot size will decrease and the energy spacing between modes will increase. For example, by reducing the mode size from 10 xcexcm to 3 xcexcm, the spacing between modes increases from 0.3 nm to approximately 3 nm. Since higher order modes with large spacing between modes have less overall overlap with the corresponding injection profile and sustain more diffraction loss, proper design will result in a VCSEL that lases mainly in the fundamental mode of the cavity.
In order to achieve such fundamental mode operation, extremely uniform current injection is needed so as to ensure sufficient gain at the center of the aperture, where the mode is determined by the half-symmetric cavity. Furthermore, in order to prevent high-order modes from lasing, the size of the aperture must be controlled such that high-order modes sustain high losses, thus promoting only fundamental-mode lasing. In addition, the top cladding and contact layer should also be sufficiently thin so as to ensure sufficient tuning of the VCSEL. By way of example but not limitation, in one preferred form of the invention, the top cladding and contact layer should be on the order of 300 nm.
Currently, there are fixed-wavelength VCSEL""s commercially available below 1.0 xcexcm.
There have been some reports of tunable LED""s and VCSEL""s. For example, Larson et al. have published results on (1) an LED (see, for example, Larson, M. C., and Harris, J. S., xe2x80x9cBroadly-tunable resonant-cavity light emissionxe2x80x9d, Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 67, No. 5, pp. 590-592, 1995); and (2) a VCSEL (see, for example, Larson, M. C., Massengale, A. R., and Harris, J. S., xe2x80x9cContinuously tunable micromachined vertical-cavity surface emitting laser with 18 nm wavelength rangexe2x80x9d, Electronic Letters, Vol. 32, No. 19, pp. 330-332, 1996).
These results indicate that Larson et al. used GaAs/AlAs for bottom DBR""s, and a gold-coated silicon-nitride membrane as the top mirror. In all of the foregoing Larson et al. devices, the top mirror release is accomplished by selectively wet-etching an underlying sacrificial layer of GaAlAs with hydrochloric acid. Since this technique provides no controlled way of undercutting, the length of the support structure for the top mirror is not well defined from device to device. Furthermore, since the top mirror in Larson et al. has lower bandwidth and reflectivity than the dielectric DBR""s of the present invention, the tuning range of the devices of Larson et al. is limited, and their spectral linewidth is broader than that provided by the present invention.
Similarly, Tran et al. have shown an LED (see, for example, Christenson, G. L., Tran, A. T. T., Zhu, Z. H., Lo, Y. H., Hong, M., Mannaerts, J. P., and Bhat, R., xe2x80x9cLong-Wavelength Resonant Vertical-Cavity LED/Photodetector with a 75-nm Tuning Rangexe2x80x9d, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, Vol. 9, No. 6, pp. 725-727, 1997); the aforementioned LED using polyimide as the sacrificial layer. This method suffers from the same lack of control over precise length fabrication. In addition, polyimide is not a stable material for making a robust device, because aging tends to degrade the stability of the cavity""s length.
A tunable VCSEL (see, for example, Vail, E. C., Li, G. S., Yuen, W. and Chang-Hasnain, C. J., xe2x80x9cHigh performance micromechanical tunable vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasersxe2x80x9d, Electronic Letters, Vol. 32, No. 20, pp. 1888-1889, 1996) has been reported by Vail et al. The Vail et al. device uses GaAs/AlAs for the top and bottom DBR""s, with a GaAs sacrificial layer for top DBR release. Although Vail et al. use a dry-etching technique to selectively remove the sacrificial GaAs layer, precise control of the top mirror length is still not feasible.
The present invention is distinct from the aforementioned devices in the following aspects, among others:
1. the present invention provides a precise method for defining the lateral dimensions of the top mirror support and the cavity length by deposited supporting posts;
2. the half-symmetric design of the VCSEL structure allows single spatial modes, lower threshold and efficient coupling into a single mode fiber; and
3. the present invention provides a method for improving single mode operation of the VCSEL through uniform current injection.